Page 49 of Comfort Read

“She didn’t! She would never do that. That wasn’t some random—it’s Featherstone’s, that store in the video.” Kit’s voice slows as part of him peels off from this otherwise all-consuming shitshow, urgently needing to revisit the details of what he just watched.

“Oh, if it’s Featherstone’s!” Sage throws his hands in the air, making an incredulous face at Kit. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“It’s Alena Featherstone she’s talking to.” Kit intends to snap this, but it comes out distant, distracted, as more and more of his attention bleeds away towards reviewing the details of that video. “Her best friend since they were both about four—you met her, actually, that night at Mitch’s. You’d probably remember if you weren’t being such a dick.”

“I’m being a dick?” Sage’s eyes bulge slightly out of his head. “You let this story leak to the press and you think I’m being⁠—”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose! This guy obviously didn’t have permission to film; it’s not like I asked him to show up there.” Horrified, Kit restarts the video as Sage’s mouth snaps shut, rewatching it with fresh eyes. “Jesus, this is—I mean, the angle—this is being filmed on a camera in someone’s shirt pocket, isn’t it? Who took this? Oh my God, are the paparazzi following my sister? In Cedar Falls? Seriously?”

Sage’s expression has shifted by the time Kit looks up from the screen. He looks less murderous than despairing now—maybe the word is resigned. He won’t meet Kit’s eyes, instead fixing his gaze out the window to look over the breathtaking view of LA as he sighs. “I did try to warn you, you know.”

“Not about this!” Kit gestures to the screen, to the tiny version of Maggie who had apparently been stalked into revealing his ill-advised confession. “The risk to me and my privacy, sure, but you never said they’d come after my family⁠—”

“Oh, of course I did,” Sage snarls, meeting Kit’s eyes at last. His are flashing with anger and something worse, something that Kit knows is hurt but can’t bear to acknowledge. “Just because I didn’t say it in so many words doesn’t mean I didn’t try to tell you—God, Kit, what did you think ‘you don’t get any privacy in this life’ meant? Didn’t you listen to anything I said? About how being with me ruined my exes’ lives? About how impossible it was for me to ever get any peace? Did you think that wouldn’t spill out into your life, that it wouldn’t affect your friends, your family?”

For the first time, a question occurs to Kit. It’s one he should have asked himself the day he signed the contract; if not then, the moment they kissed on the red carpet; if not then, in the aftermath of Thanksgiving, when he and Maggie had that stupid, ill-fated fight. It’s a simple question, and a horrible one, and one he suspects he’ll be asking himself for months and years to come: What the hell have I done?

Kit keeps this thought to himself, but his expression must say it for him, because Sage barks out a horrible, unamused laugh and shakes his head. “Well. I guess that answers that. Look, you should go. I have a lot of damage control to do, and obviously this,” he gestures between them, and then at the bed, before he tightens the muscles in his neck and looks away again, “was a horrible mistake.”

Kit reels back a step, feeling as though Sage has hit him. But his voice is even, impressively so, when he says, “Fine, then. If that’s how you feel. After all, you’ve just saved me and my family a lot of trouble, as it turns out… so thank you, I guess. And goodbye!”

He turns on his heel and stalks out of the room even as Sage, in a moment Kit would find hilarious if he was any other person alive right now, yells out a furious, “You’re welcome!”

He makes it all the way down the stairs before he realizes he’s still holding Sage’s phone in his hand. For a horrible second he considers going back upstairs to return it, but the thought is so hideous that he panics and chucks the phone down into the nearest receptacle instead. It’s an umbrella stand, and Kit’s pretty sure Sage will never think to look for it there, but he can’t bring himself to care about that, or about whether he’s cracked the screen. That’s Sage’s problem, which means it isn’t Kit’s problem. None of Sage’s problems have anything to do with Kit anymore.

This thought should be a relief. Instead, Kit finds his eyes swimming, turning Sage’s beautiful home into an expensive beige blur as he slams his way out of the front door.

TWENTY

It doesn’t occur to Kit until he’s halfway to the airport, in the backseat of a car he called from a hastily downloaded app on his phone, that this time he’s going to have to figure out how to get himself home. That’s a process which will involve, if nothing else, purchasing plane tickets. He looks up the price of a same-day flight from LAX to Ithaca and balks. Then he looks up how much it would cost to rent a car and spend two days driving it across the country—in spite of the added inconvenience and labor, that’s somehow more expensive. He’s made a stressful, uncertain peace with saying goodbye to nearly all of the money currently in his bank account by the time they pull up to the airport.

The minute he steps out of the car, however, he’s forced to say goodbye to any semblance of peace, however uncertain or stressful. The world around him explodes in a haze of light and sound.

“Kit! Care to comment on the deception you⁠—”

“—think it was serious, defrauding the public like⁠—”

“—whose idea was it to lie to⁠—”

“—do your families know? Obviously your sister does, but⁠—”

“—talked to Seline at all? Was she hurt? Did she mention⁠—”

“—what did Sage say when he⁠—”

“—are you still together, Kit? Not that you ever were⁠—”

“—I said, hold still for the photo!”

Kit hears a loud, panicky wheeze as he throws his arm up to shield his face from the flashbulbs. Then he realizes the sound is coming from him. It was one thing, unsettling but less overwhelming, to be caught up in this while standing to Sage’s left, with Eleanor pushing through the crowd towards him and a getaway car a few feet away. It’s another thing entirely to be here in it alone, his rideshare already fleeing down the asphalt and guilt splashing around in his gut like battery acid, corroding anything it touches. What the hell is he supposed to say to these people? What the hell kind of right do they have to ask for anything from him right now, today, after one of them stalked his sister and published the results and destroyed something new and fragile and lovely? Kit had held it in the palm of his hand only this morning, an amazing, impossible future blooming out of a bud he’d been sure was dead, each petal brighter and more beautiful than the next. And these monsters had wrapped their hands around his own and forced it into a fist, crushing what might have been into a sad pile of almost.

Abruptly, Kit understands how Sage could want to crush these bastards’ cameras. If anything, camera damage isn’t enough. He wants to find a baseball bat and take it to every window in their homes, or sink a knife into their tires, or pour cement into their laptop ports and then huck each one into the sea.

He also, unfortunately, wants to cry. Of the options, he’s fairly certain that’s the one that he’s likeliest to achieve, and thus the one likeliest to be live on TMZ in a few short hours.

“Kit!” The voice is familiar, but it only breaks through the cacophony to get his attention because it’s accompanied by a hand on his arm.

He jerks, afraid one of the photographers has grabbed him, and then gasps: “Eleanor?”